New Trial for Marissa Alexander and Call to Action

Yesterday’s thrilling overturn of the guilty verdict against Marissa Alexander put the onus on Florida State Prosecutor Angela Corey to either try Marissa again or drop the case. We say drop the case! Stop this cruel and unforgivable vendetta against a mother of three who did no wrong, but defended her life by taking the only action she felt possible. Stop using taxpayer money to hound and harass a domestic violence survivor.

The state of Florida has until October 16 to refile charges against Marissa. We need to put the pressure on now to convince Prosecutor Corey not to do it. Marissa has already spent three years apart from her children and family. Her life has been changed forever by the state’s vicious Mandatory Minimum sentencing and its cold insensitivity to the realities of the sufferings of abused women.

Join the Free Marissa Now conference call tomorrow, Saturday, Sept. 28 to brainstorm our strategy for a massive international campaign to get this case dismissed now. What about a national call-in day, a new petition, letter writing campaigns, and media outreach? What other ideas do you have? How would you like to take part? How can the Drop the Case demand be worked into other organizing you are doing? Let’s talk — and then let’s act!

Comments

My guess is they will refile & try to get her to plead out to time served. If I understand Florida law correctly, she can sue the government for prosecuting her on a self-defense case, so they’ll try very hard to avoid admitting wrongdoing. Hopefully, she wins this because she does not deserve to have a felony record.

True, but there’s a couple of problems with a self defense claim (remember, she already tried claiming self defense in the original trial and was denied):
1: If you feel your life is in danger, you don’t fire a warning shot – in this particular case, she’d have been better off saying she shot at him and missed (bear in mind the shot went into the wall behind him, it wasn’t a shot into the ceiling).
2: She retreated from the confrontation to retrieve the firearm and then returned (it really is that second part that’s the problem), which also undermines her claim that she felt that her life was in danger.

.. at least, those were the two main criteria used by the judge in determining that she didn’t have a self defense claim.

I think the only likely positive outcomes here are that she pleads to a lesser charge in exchange for time served (which is what Marla Swearingen did – another woman sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot) or the jury knows she’s facing a 20 year sentence and choose not to convict her on the felony charges at the retrial, of course that depends on a Florida jury, so who the hell knows?

I thought she couldn’t get out through the garage and he cornered her. The only case I thought the state had was child endangerment because they were near the wall she hit. Time served is plenty in that case. She should sue, they should have let her plead out to unlawful discharge or something like that.

According to the prosecution (you can find the court documents online), the shooting incident took place in the kitchen, not the garage, he didn’t follow her, he remained in the kitchen with his two sons.

She had to pass the unobstructed front & back doors to travel between the kitchen & garage so she had at least two points of egress that she chose not to use.

I would tend to agree that time served would probably be sufficient, but she was offered a plea deal prior to trial, and chose to roll the dice with the jury which is why the 10-20-life statute kicked in.

Note that it tends to only be people who believe they were justified who get fucked by 10-20-life, because the guy who gets arrested for robbing a liquor store (which is who the law is aimed at) knows he’s committed a crime and pleads out instead of opting for a trial.